28.1.05

The remote control shifted power to the individual, and the technologies that have embraced this principle in its wakethe Walkman, the Video Cassette Recorder, Digital Video Recorders such as TiVo, and portable music devices like the iPod have created a world where the individuals control over the content, style, and timing of what he consumes is nearly absolute. Retailers and purveyors of entertainment increasingly know our buying history and the vagaries of our unique tastes. As consumers, we expect our television, our music, our movies, and our books on demand. We have created and embraced technologies that enable us to make a fetish of our preferences...

They encourage not the cultivation of taste, but the numbing repetition of fetish. And they contribute to what might be called “egocasting,” the thoroughly personalized and extremely narrow pursuit of one’s personal taste. In thrall to our own little technologically constructed worlds, we are, ironically, finding it increasingly difficult to appreciate genuine individuality.

My family believed in the "no thank you" helping - you had to at least taste the food. Shouldn't you do the same with ideas? Who knows, you may learn something.

26.1.05

I've been ponder a post about the nature of blogging and the hubris of many those that do (taking all the credit for the Dan Rather episode, for example). Then Mark Dery comes along with this post and, well, I couldn't possibly say it better.

Updated: Tom Watson says some interesting things on the anniversary of his blog. And, according to Dave Pollard, this blog is one of the "5 million active bloggers" (which gets me a grade of about D-/F). Since I'm doing this more for myself than for my loyal following, that's just fine with me.

Bookslut mentioned this article in the Independent. It offers two different takes on the nature of bookselling - one writer works for a Small Shop and the other works for a Large Shop (I'm guessing Waterston's).

I know that some of us do not have the opportunity to choose where we shop for books. My parents, for example, live in an area that until recently had no bookstores (now there's the book department at Wal-Mart and a nice, huge Barnes & Noble) so they shopped on Amazon. I tried, with minimal success, to suggest Powells as a better alternative.

That got me thinking. If you could have the choice, which would you choose? For me, it's a no-brainer: smaller is better. Yes, the "collection" might be (often is, in fact) smaller but I've never been in a small bookstore that hasn't offered to order the book for me. And the people are more receptive to my comments (unlike Barnes & Noble, where I was once told that Bronowski's Ascent of Man was definitely a self-help book and that A.N. Roquelaure's Beauty's Punishment was horror and that they wouldn't move the books to the more appropriate sections of anthropology and erotica).

24.1.05

"Yet, my praise for libraries will be a little more optimistic. I belong to the people who still believe that printed books have a future and that all fears a propos of their disappearance are only the last example of other fears, or of milleniaristic terrors about the end of something, the world included."

"How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer."

Usually I try to update the "recently read" list as I finish books. However, thanks to ALA's Midwinter Conference, I now have a plethora of Reader's Advance copies and I'm plowing through them. Most are Children's/YA lit books (eg, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan and Click Here by Denise Vega) and are very quick reads. They'll appear in my quarterly round-up of what I've read, but the "recent reads" won't get updated for a while.

If you were one of those taking part in the "Not One More Damn Dime" day festivities, this post might make you think. I didn't, but I have given thought to the "Turn Off Your TV Day/Week" idea. Thanks to Beatrice's pointing out this post on Shovelware, I might just reconsider.

Too long have the censorious, humor-impaired wings of the left—the Dworkinite penis-is-a-weapon paleoconservative wing of feminism; the beige, Organization Man policy wonks; the excruciatingly earnest shoot-your-TV neo-Luddites—been the left's public face.

The challenge doesn't lie in acknowledging that he's right in his analysis. The challenge lies in finding effective ways of protest.

20.1.05

Reading Children (or Teens or Adults) don't usually think about being "demonstrative" in their reading - they're too busy getting on with the actual joy of the words and the book. At least, that's what I was doing. The idea that someone would be watching what I read, or impressed by it, never crossed my mind. It also never crossed my mind that others might be reading differently than I (I knew people read slower, or that some very strange people didn't like to read but different didn't occur to me).

When I take the subway, I see people reading. Until I read these posts, I assumed they were reading because it gave them pleasure. Now I wonder.

As some of you know, I'm looking for a job outside NYC. When asked why, I fumble for a response - I like falling asleep listening to crickets rather than car horns, the feel of grass beneath my bare feet, the quiet after a hard day's work, etc.. There are usually skeptical glances and I know that I haven't accurately explained myself.

I love some bustle. I prefer to commute to the bustle, however, not be embustled 24-7. Myriad options are nice, but I suspect that 84% of these options consist of ethnic food, readily available, and the other 12% are made up of museums and concerts most urban dwellers rarely have time to attend... All well and good for the big things, but when you're also competing to get across the street, get noticed in line at the deli, get your cart down the narrow grocery store aisle, and all the other ordinary details of life, you get either tired or cranky or both.

Despite my colleagues insistance, I'm only "slightly nerdy". Since you're reading this on-line, on a blog, you've got some level of nerdiness... but what is your Nerd Quotient? (þ: The Little Professor)

13.1.05

I have to confess, I'm intrigued. What would life be like if I did the same? Would I read more or less than I currently do? Would what I read change to reflect my lack of knowledge about what's going on "out there"?

How would my professional life be affected? I imagine it would suffer, since one of the job requirements of "school librarian" is that you be aware of what's going on. Newspapers and magazines are critical for that.

I also asked myself how "filtered" this person's life could be if they blogged. Clearly they're not as out of it as they might claim!

12.1.05

I've been spending a lot of time working with my students and colleagues on plagiarism and copyright and fair use. The younger they are, the more they agree that it's not fair to "steal" something, but the older they are the more they play the slippery slope game.

Recently I had a disagreement with a friend about a post they'd blogged. It was a link, probably a fairly common one, but one I knew I'd shown them a few months ago. This person posted the link with no acknowledgement. Now, I'm not saying that I was the only source for this link. But it did raise the question of ethics in blogging, something that has been written about far better by others.

I try, to the best of my ability, to give credit for links and ideas both on this blog and in e-mails, papers, etc.. Sometimes "everyone" is linking/saying/thinking the same thing and that's when it becomes difficult. One teacher I had said that if a fact can be found in three or more places, you don't need to cite it. (For example, I don't need to cite Janson when I say that Leonardo da Vinci painted the "Mona Lisa" because that fact is in so many other places.)

Blogs are (for the most part) public forums. Which means that saying things about people should be done carefully. Some people seem to forget this, and then get surprised when it comes back to haunt them. Giving one's opinion is one thing, but libel is another. Some blogs tread that line very carefully, others blow right past it without a second glance.

Basically, I think of blogging as a way to share my ideas with whomever cares to drop by. Because I try to live a morally upright life, giving credit to others for their ideas is the easy thing, the right thing to do. Equally important is not writing posts that might come back to haunt me - in my current job and life, or in a future job and different life. And, dear readers, you have my permission to call me on it when I deviate.

11.1.05

Ive been pondering this post for a while. Every time I think I get a handle on it, something new pops up and I rethink (or reconfigure) my thoughts.

First, lets start with news thats been making the rounds recently: The report that says that

The number of blogs and the use of blog readers rose rapidly last year--but a majority of Americans still do not know what a blog is...[R]eadership of Web blogs--essentially, Web-based diaries--spiked 58 percent last year, with 27 percent of Internet users, or 32 million people, saying that they read blogs. Twelve percent of people who read blogs also chose to post comments on them.... But despite the rise in usage, "blog" still is not a household word. Only 38 percent of Internet users know what a blog is, while the rest are not sure what the term means.

Great. So Im part of a growing trend. Now what?

Well, the what is what does blogging mean? There are so many different types of blogs, ranging from the list of links without commentary to the pure writing of an author manque and everything in between. Some blogs are well written, others could use editorial guidance. Subject matter varies, some covering a wide of interests and topics, while some are very narrowly focused.

Anyone can blog, which some people see as a good thing. On the other hand, as WSJ's OpinionJournal, perhaps not:

They certainly got under the skin of some of the paper's executives. Randell Beck, executive editor of the Argus Leader, called some of the bloggers work "crap" and said they represented an organized effort by conservatives to discredit his paper. In July, he explained to readers that "true believers of one stripe or another, no longer content to merely bore spouses and neighbors with their nutty opinions, can now spew forth on their own blogs, thereby playing a pivotal role in creating the polarized climate that dominates debate on nearly every national issue. If Hitler were alive today, he'd have his own blog."

Still to come: thoughts about the so-called blogosphere and blog ethics. But this is enough to ponder for one day.

Of course, you could level the same charge of myopia against a project that seemed pure lunacy until it became a huge hit: "The Passion of the Christ." ... If you're not a believer, Mr. Gibson is not trying to convince you. He doesn't explain his hero's importance any more than Mr. Stone or Mr. Spacey does, but then his hero was a lot better known to begin with.

But the jingle, as anyone with a television knows, is a vanishing art form. It is too quaint, too corny, too oldschool for our ironic times. Naming your product in a commercial for your product is just tacky, say advertising executives. Modern pitchmen prefer pop songs that create a mood or spark an emotional association or conjure up some sort of vague but potent lifestyle-oriented craving that, if all goes as planned, attaches to a product and translates to a sale.

Unfortunately, I'm not paying enough attention to the product to associate it with a specific pop/rock song. And then there is the curse of the overexposed song, or the song that just doesn't match the product but is so "now" that the ad-guys just have to have it for their commercial.

Equally sad is the fact that I'm not the target audience. Apparently my advanced age has made me brand-loyal (which isn't true, for any and all ad guys out there), so ads that appeal to me are incidental. Of course, that doesn't quite explain all the ads that actually pertain to people my age but never mind, I'm supposed to enjoy whatever music they use as aural background.

I miss the jingles. I'll bet that a product that created something new and memorable would do well - the ads would be talked about, the jingle sung, and everyone would be happy. Pity my vote doesn't count.

9.1.05

I went out for brunch today and on the way passed the Christmas Tree Mulching Truck. It's a sad time of year in some ways, as formerly decorated trees get dumped on the sidewalk, still slightly tinseled. But there's a New York City tradition that brings a bit of country to the city: a truck to which you can bring your tree and have it mulched. The scent of pine fills the air and, for a brief moment, you're in the Great Outdoors. What a heavenly smell and wonderful way for the tree to end its career.

The Child Reader is all children who are being "encouraged" to read. These children read artificially in that they read because they are given books. They may do so willingly (and move themselves into my other category) or they may read only the books they are given and never read a book independently after the age of ten. It is these readers who critics discuss when they see children as something different in the market, a group for whom books will be chosen by adults.

Then there is the Reading Child. You know who this child is. If you are reading this blog you probably were one. You were the child who went from non-reader to reader almost over night (this often happens young but I know of one person for whom it happened at the age of ten). You don't remember the stage where you halted over words, because you were too busy falling over the next one. Francis Spufford writes of this brilliantly in The Child that Books Built and incidentally suggests that checking children understand what they read may destroy the pleasure in the act of reading--that reading is not about content but about form.

While I've posted some of my thoughts on that blog, the more I thought about this, the more I wanted to add things.

For example, what about the rush to technology? Is plopping children in front of the computer and encouraging them to blog or play "educational" games going to hinder the developing Reading Child? What about using tv as a babysitter? What about all the learning disabled? How do we work with them so that they don't' become discouraged, when so many have the potential to be Reading Children? And what do we do with all those "potentials" who are in non-reading households? How do we encourage them to buck the surrounding norm and find joy in the pages of "treeware"?

8.1.05

Sometimes things just sort of hit you over the head. You know what I'm talking about: suddenly "everyone" is talking about something, or you'll see three of the same thing in the space of an hour. It's a little too much to be coincidence, but it certainly can't have been planned, can it?

The juxtaposition of these two articles, on the same day, got me thinking more about my relationship to God, and morality. I've been pondering a post about blogging and ethics - perhaps this is the impetus I need to put fingers to keyboard and get it done.

7.1.05

Representative John Cosgrove has recently introduced a bill to the Virginia legislature that will make it a misdemeanor crime for any woman who's experienced a miscarriage - at any stage of gestation - to fail to report that miscarriage to local law enforcement personnel within twelve hours.

UNBELIEVEABLE.

Most people that have miscarriages are upset - dare I say devastated - by the loss. And now they have to tell the police about it? Hello???? Most women don't announce pregnancies until after the first trimester because miscarriages are so common. And now, under this law, if they fail to report one it's a crime?

We should all be outraged that someone would even think up such a thing. This has nothing to do with being pro- or anti- choice. It has nothing to do with "blue" or "red". It's sheer idiocy.

5.1.05

SwissToni has some interesting thoughts about recent comments made by Chancellor Gordon Brown.

I agree that debt relief would be a huge help to these countries if it actually gets to the people. And that's always been the problem, hasn't it? All that corruption. And bias. India, for example, is hindering aid efforts in some areas.

Well, "Who's my Daddy?" tanked in the ratings (despite the adoptee being a softcore star!). So there's hope for us after all...

Or so I thought until last night, when Amber Frey got the star/VIP treatment by Matt Lauer. You know, when this whole thing broke, I thought that this was a nothing case. I mean, yes, a woman and her unborn child were murdered, which is sad. But the interest in the case seemed to be outsized and I really didn't understand why. To be honest, I still don't. For some reason we are supposed to care about this woman and her accidental role in a sordid murder story. Equally confusing is why we're supposed to care about the sordid murder story.

On a brighter note, the new season of Monk starts Friday and MI-5 is returning to A&E this Saturday.

3.1.05

I've looked over my list of books read in 2004. This summary is a variant of Jessamyn's. The thing is, I don't catalog them monthly, I do it quarterly. So by the time I get around to the actual cataloging, I don't remember when I read it. Still, it's an interesting look at my reading this century. One thing that struck me was that I thought I was reading more than I am. This requires work!

number of books cataloged in 2004: 124
number of books cataloged in 2003: 69
number of books cataloged in 2002: 123
number of books cataloged in 2001: 76
number of books cataloged in 2000: 99

For 2004:
average read per month: 10.33
adult fiction as percentage of total: 14
children's/YA fiction as percentage of total: 35
mystery as percentage of total: 23
non-fiction as percentage of total: 13

Luckily, very few fall into the "dislike" column - most are in the "good" to "very good" range. A few - maybe 5 - (no names, but you can e-mail and ask) are ones I'd like to request my time back for having read. That's pretty good odds, isn't it?

Then there's Stephanie. She writes about her pile of books to be read (what I fondly refer to as "Mt. Bookpile"). My problem isn't a pile or two, it's a 6' bookcase! However, there's a lot to be said for narrowing it down to a few piles. Which is, in fact, one of my goals for 2005. Of course, that will mean less purchasing of books and I'm not sure I can do that. On the other hand, I could just read more rather than spending time watching tv.

History buffs have a mania for applying "Age of" labels to epochs gone by: the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the Age of Aquarius. When historians look back on the current age, what label will they choose? Some psychologists are already suggesting that the Age of Anxiety would be an appropriate moniker. (They're also suggesting Century of Stress, proving, if nothing else, that the joys of alliteration are not lost on the psychology profession).